The DC motor's empty lead → Positive (red wire) of the external batteryĭon't forget to connect the GND of the battery with the GND of the PICO, as if it's not connected, the circuit will not work at all.Collector pin (TIP122) → DC motor lead 'DC motors do not have polarities, so it doesn't matter which lead'.The DC motor should be connected as follows: We are going to add our DC motor and an external 'PLACE HOLDER' battery, to provide the motor with the needed power without harming our PICO. This is why we must use a transistor to connect it, and we'll be using the TIP122 Transistor, as we can use it to raise the current provided by our PICO to the amount needed by the motor.

DC motors have a high current draw, thus we can't directly connect them to our PICO, as it only can offer 40 mA per GPIO pin, while the motor needs 100 mA.

So, let's start by connecting our DC motors. And we're going to create this fan by using a small DC motor with a propeller installed on it. To make a fire fighting robot effective it must have the ability to fight fire, and for that we are going to create a fan that we aim at the fire and put it out with. Connecting the flame sensors is very easy, just connect the VCC, and GND of the sensors to the VCC, and GND of PICO respectively, then connect the output pins as follows: Let's now connect it to our PICO to test our wiring and code logic, to make sure that everything is working properly.

D0: the digital output pin, connected with the desired digital on PICO.

GND: negative pin, connected with PICO's GND pin.

VCC: positive 5 volts, connected with PICO's VCC pin.And they'll be placed in such a way to have the ability to accurately pin point the flame source and put it out.īefore we start using the flame sensors, let's talk about how they work: flame sensor modules are mainly made of infrared receiver LEDs that can detect the infrared light that is emitted from flames, and send the data as either digital or analog input, in our case we'll be using a flame sensor that sends digital output. We'll be using 3 flame sensors in this project and we'll have the robot move independently using their readings, we'll place these sensors on the middle, left, and right side of the robot's chassis. That is why we are going to start with the components that are responsible for detecting the fire, but before we do, let's assemble our 2WD robot chassis kit, as we'll build our robot based on it. Let's start with the most important part of our fire fighting robot, which is the ability to detect fires when they happen.

L298n motor driver with sensors